King Simeon II and My Uncle Stephane

Madrid, Spain - June 6, 1955
My uncle Stephane began his career as a journalist in 1949 when he got a job working for the French magazine Paris-Match. Here he is interviewing young King Simeon II of Bulgaria who was in exile in Spain at the time. My uncle Stephane posed him the following question: “Your majesty, who will put the crown on your head tomorrow?”. Although Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha never went back to his native land as a king, he did become the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria and was sworn into office on July 24, 2001. This transition from king to Prime Minister is an event that is unprecedented in history. On May 9, 2002, my uncle Stephane, author of Crown of Thorns, arrived from New York to Sofia to present his autobiography My Odyssey and was quoted saying: “We are the only country, where the king does not reign but rules”.This photograph appears on page 336 of My Odyssey, the autobiography of my uncle Stephane.